MK Family Law

The  American Bar Association's International Law Section  will host a free webinar on February 10th at 11 a.m. ET.  During this hour-and-a-half webinar, join  Melissa Kucinski of MK Family Law  and  James Netto of the International Family Law Group  as they take attendees through the top highlights in international family law in 2020 in the United States and Europe.   Registration can be found by  clicking here . 

The Appellate Division of the Superior Court of NJ's case of Begum v. Palanisamy involves a multi-jurisdictional family and a NJ custody order.  While the opinion itself is merely about a variety of motions filed between the parties, there are some interesting issues that arise that allow this blog to address the mirroring or domesticating of U.S. custody orders in foreign countries.  Under the parents' custody agreement, incorporated into a NJ court order, they shared joint legal custody of their minor daughter, and the child was permitted to relocate to Singapore, with the child's father in NJ having access to the child in Singapore and in the United States.  The order also specified that NJ would retain jurisdiction over the custody matter and the parties were permitted, but not required, to domesticate the NJ custody order in Singapore. The parties returned to the NJ court not long after when the plaintiff mother sought Singaporean citizenship for the child, Alexis....

The Superior Court of Pennsylvania, in JS v. RSS , addressed an issue of an international relocation and a U.S. court's subject matter jurisdiction over a custody modification action.  The facts are long and twisted, but the salient ones are: the parents divorced in 2015.  The father sought custody of their child with a request to relocate him to Hungary in November 2015.  The mother agreed to the father's custody of the child and the child's relocation to Hungary, believing the father was entering a witness protection program. The father didn't move to Hungary, and the parties actually threw the terms of their custody agreement out the window.  The mother had significant access to the child.  Apparently, however, the father did relocate the child to Hungary in July 2016, unbeknownst to mother.  The mother did not see the child after July 2016, but the father still traveled to Pennsylvania, and remained sexually intimate with the mother, even though he had ...